


When The Clues Don't Match

by LookUponMyWorksYeMighty (Krasimer)



Series: We Built a Second Home [6]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Because they're trying to subconsciously recombine, But there are two bodies, Crossing Timelines, Family History, Ford and Stan are one person, M/M, Stancest - Freeform, Timeline Shenanigans, Why are they together?, Yearbooks, two bodies with one soul
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 10:28:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16911240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/LookUponMyWorksYeMighty
Summary: Their names, their lives, everything was—not matched, exactly, but lined up. Like someone had planned it from the beginning, like something had been there from the very start. Ford and Stan, Stan and Ford.StanandFord.Back when they had been children, they had been Stanley and Stanford. Distinct names and identities. The Nerd and the Boxer, separate but identical except for a few quirks here and there. Their father hadn’t been proud of either one of them until Stan had learned to throw a great left hook, until Ford had opened up the potential to earn millions.Stan closed his eyes, rubbing at them. Thinking about it was giving him a headache. He and Ford were he and Ford, separate people.…Right?





	When The Clues Don't Match

The yearbooks were sitting on the table.

Stan looked between the two, dragging a finger over the one marked with his name and the one marked with Ford’s. Had they always only had one of them?

Ford’s had Ford in it, but no Stan.

Stan’s had Stan in it, but no Ford.

Their names, their lives, everything was—not matched, exactly, but lined up. Like someone had planned it from the beginning, like something had been there from the very start. Ford and Stan, Stan and Ford.

StanandFord.

Back when they had been children, they had been Stanley and Stanford. Distinct names and identities. The Nerd and the Boxer, separate but identical except for a few quirks here and there. Their father hadn’t been proud of either one of them until Stan had learned to throw a great left hook, until Ford had opened up the potential to earn millions.

Stan closed his eyes, rubbing at them. Thinking about it was giving him a headache. He and Ford were he and Ford, separate people.

…Right?

If he thought about it too hard, he could remember stringing the golden stars he’d kept hold of. They weren’t glittering, anymore, decades of wear and being shoved into a shoe to keep track of them when times got the toughest. When he’d had to chew his way out of a trunk, they’d been in the toe of his left shoe and he still remembered the way they hurt his foot as he limped away.

But he hadn’t been the one to string them together.

He still remembered Ford shyly presenting them to him, still remembered the way his brother had blushed and fussed and smiled when he had taken them. On the flipside of that, he also remembered how long it had taken to find the right beads for it.

How many times he’d struggled with the orientation of the stars.

It had been some nerdy thing Ford had come up with – He’d said he was giving Stan a Wish to keep in his pocket. Some sappy shit like that had always been Ford’s secret _thing_. Stan had always been a bit more open about his love for trashy romance, but never in front of their father.

Remembering his childhood made his brain ache, something clear and obvious in front of him that he didn’t want to acknowledge.

He remembered a single bed.

He remembered bunkbeds.

He remembered failed tests and tests with high-scores written on them. Remembered being in the chair as the principal congratulated him and remembered being outside the door, listening to his brother’s future spiraling out and away without him.

_But the stars were the worst thing._

Stan had gotten them from Ford. Stan had strung them himself. He didn’t know which memory was true, anymore. One of them had to be, right?

_Right?_

The doubt crept into his mind and he looked around the house for a minute, still seated at the dining room table. As long as he could remember, there had been a six-fingered hand reaching for his, holding his and pulling him along.

But he also remembered signing his name on the wall of a cave—half-cursive, half-print. He’d been learning cursive in school, just before it let out for the summer. He’d been the one student to be praised for his skills with the writing.

Ford had been the one praised for it.

Ford had signed his first name in cursive, Stan had signed his in print, their last name had been in print as well.

The brown jacket Stan had worn as a child had been a ragged thing by the time he’d grown out of it.

By the time Ford had grown out of it.

He couldn’t remember what was supposed to be attributed to his brother or to him, anymore. Everything was sliding together and Stan groaned as he put his head in his hands. Ford had been quiet all day, keeping himself closed off from Stan. Neither of them had taken the kids leaving too well, hadn’t taken the discussion about the yearbooks being weird well either.

As if he’d been summoned by Stan’s thoughts, Ford’s hand came to rest on the pages of the still-open yearbooks. “I believe we’re the result of a paradox,” he muttered. His other hand came to rest on Stan’s shoulder. “The both of us.”

“What do you mean, Sixer?”

“I mean,” Ford sighed and pulled out the chair in front of him, settling into it after a second of hesitation. “I think only one of us is supposed to exist. Maybe the timeline split to allow for something, maybe one of us died young and we simply shifted our awareness over into an alternate one. I don’t know, Stanley,” he pressed his forehead against Stan’s shoulder. “Maybe we were one person, with averaged traits, and we were split into two and…And…”

“And, what, we were shunted to different ends of the spectrum?” Stan almost wanted to laugh it off, make a joke of it, but something about the theories Ford was putting forth was hitting home with him. “An ideal version of us—Smart, but not too smart, physically capable, and somehow able to make our pops proud.”

“Weirder things have happened,” Ford muttered. “Weirder and weirder things happen every single day, especially in this town.”

Stan reached up and cupped Ford’s cheek in his hand. “What if we’re just…Not meant to exist together?” he whispered. “Maybe that’s why we keep fighting, why we keep finding something wedged between us until we’re in different places. It happened when we were kids, it happened when I broke your machine…Ford, what if we’re just meant to not be together?”

“Stanley,” Ford grabbed the edges of his chair and turned him towards him, eyes focused on his face and something determined in them. “I would find a way to revert us to the Weirdmageddon timeline before I admitted that we were not meant to be together. I don’t know what else is happening but I know that this,” he gestured between them. “ _Us,_ is what feels right. I was angry at you but I still loved you with everything I had in me—Out of stubborn pride, I forced myself not to seek you out when I was in college. If I had, I would have found you and kept you with me at all times.”

Something warm and almost sharp surged in his chest at hearing that. “I remember doing things you did, Sixer.”

“I remember having a great left hook,” Ford countered. “I don’t know what is happening or why,” he cupped both hands on Stan’s cheeks. “But I am not going to let anything come between us again. Decades spent without you were _agony_.”

“Like I was missing a part of myself,” Stan muttered. “Like someone had gone in and torn it out.”

“Yes!” Ford laughed like it was pressed out of him. “Exactly!”

“About your machine,” Stan felt like a kid again, like he wanted to hide from the authorities staring him down. “It was still moving when I left it. Still working. Still spinning.”

“It wasn’t when the committee got there,” Ford frowned, meeting his brother’s eyes. “When they got there, it had stopped, the grate into the power generation was off, and there was smoke coming out of it.” He shrugged his shoulder, still holding on to Stan. “Does it matter, now?”

“I dunno,” Stan frowned as well. “Does it?”

“…It was still moving when you left it?”

“I hit the table,” Stan shook his head, taking Ford’s wrists in his hands. “I knew better than to mess with it, that thing was your baby.” Holding him felt better than anything else. Like a missing piece from the center of a puzzle had been put back into place. He didn’t let that distract him, though. “Wait, it was completely dead by the time you got to it?”

“Yes,” Ford blinked a couple of times, then narrowed his eyes and glanced towards the living room. Bill, in human form and stuck that way, had been put up in a hammock in the corner. “I have a suspicion he has something to do with this.”

“Probably,” Stan leaned in and put his forehead against Ford’s.

Whatever else they were going to discuss, whatever else they were going to work out, it could wait. They’d been through trauma and messed up timelines and who knew what else at this point.

If someone wanted them to separate out and act like normal people, _they could wait._

Stan had been separated from Ford for thirty years and they had just been through trauma.

Being without him had felt like having a limb cut off, he felt he was due some time to recover and rediscover how they fit together.

**Author's Note:**

> And briefly, in the main chunk of the story, I touched upon their yearbooks not matching up right. 
> 
>  
> 
> Here's the answer to that.


End file.
